In this article I will explain the 2 most crucial settings to use on the metronome and their relationship to developing lethal shredding speed!

A Major factor to becoming truly fast is mastering tremelo picking. And guess what! Yep, our buddy the metronome is going to help us to do it.

Temelo picking is just alternate picking – down,up,down,up etc. - on one note so lets set the metronome up and get started!

Set the Metronome to 8th note triplets and adjust the tempo to a nice easy speed. Your starting tempo should be something you can play easily with no error for an extended time period. You should heara steady pulse of clicks (Tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic) with a staggering feel.

Now start alternate picking in time with the clicks on the 5th fret of the large E string(note A). The clicks come in a series of 3 so I want you to play the 1st click of each group of 3 slightly louder than the other 2. This is your pulse click which needs to be in perfect time.

If your metronome has a pendulum arm or a horizontal LED display you should play the pulse note whenever the arm reaches the extreme left or right. In the case of an LED display this is the extremeleft or right LED light. It is common for metronomes to play the pulse note louder as well.

You should realize that when you hear a guitar player playing fast tremelo picking that the notes are a series of small bundles - in this case they are 3 note bundles – tied together to form a larger musical pattern. The pulse note will become familiar to you so if you solo over a song with a fast 4/4 tempo you can simply count off the pulse notes in time with the beat. A bar of tremelo picking using the above setting produces 12 notes per bar. By recognising you pulse note you only have to count from 1 to 4 to keep effective time using tremelo picking.

So now that you have a few ideas about how and why to do things you can increase the tempo speed. I like to jump up in 10bpm lots but you can use smaller amounts. The main thing to remember is not to increase the tempo by large amounts too quickly. Lets say you started at 80bpm and you executed your tremelo picking with no mistakes using relaxed alternate picking technique and economy of movement(small controlled movements). Now, bump it up to 90bpm and listen to clicks before you play anything.

Before you start you should realise that there is no difference between playing slow and fast. Its common for students to hear a faster tempo and immediately say to themselves “That's too fast I'll never do that”. And guess what? Their mind makes it true. Your mind is so powerful that it will make statements like this a reality. You should instead clear your mind of all thought and simply play.

Lets continue. Using the correct mindset above you tremelo pick perfectly at 90bpm so you would bump the tempo up to 100bpm make your mind calm and clear of distraction then go for it!

If you find that you were not able to make the jump to 90bpm then stay on 80 bpm for a day or two or even a week. If you are new to tremelo picking then you have to condition your muscles to perform the work. Training your muscles should be done at a slow tempo from 40 – 60bpm. Once this is done then attempt to increase your speed again and you will see a huge improvement.

I mentioned 2 crucial settings earlier. The 2nd is 16th notes. Set your metronome to this setting and listen to the clicks. This time you will hear bundles of 4 clicks(Tic, tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic, tic – Tic, tic, tic, tic). Lets start with a nice easy tempo say 60bpm. As before, start alternate picking on the 5th fret of the big E string(Note A). Play the pulse note slightly louder than the other 3.

The process for improving speed is the same for 16th notes as 8th note triplets.

You should practice tremelo picking separately on all 6 strings as each string has different resistence and uses the muscles in your hand differently

If you are interested in more information on my guitar teaching methods I do have an ebook available with MP3's titled Shred Lords – Neoclassical Guitar available at my website www.jameserceg.com. James Erceg is a full time professional guitar teacher and player.

© James for The Guitar Resource, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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And so it went on year after year from Jimmy Hendrix and Led Zeppelin to Guns and Roses then Iron Maiden, Queen, Metallica, Van Halen, you name it! If the music had fast lead guitar I was there listening to it.

I had a natural talent for the guitar but I found that I had limits. I couldn't play all of the faster lead guitar that my heroes could on there recordings. The harder I tried to play these fast ideas the more impossible they became. Sometimes I would practice 8 hours straight and be no closer to reaching my goal of playing lightning fast. Does this sound familiar to anyone reading this?

This became even worse when I would attempt lead guitar by artists like Yngwie Malmsteen. I can play Yngwie Malmsteens song "I am a Viking" note for note perfect without even breaking a sweat now. But, back then this was impossible for me and not through lack of trying or ability.

For a few years I gave up trying to play as fast as Malmsteen. I started telling myself loser negative comments like "He's just born better and faster" or "I could never be that good so why bother" and "I'm just better at rythm guitar than lead" as well as "He probably started younger than me so I can never become that good as I started too late".

Luckily I did keep playing the guitar and worked on semi fast blues playing and a nice wide vibrato similar to Vai in the movie "Crossroads". I could always play fast on one string using ideas largely borrowed from Kirk Hammet of Metallica. Still, anything fast that involved string skipping scared the crap out of me especially around other people who would say "Wow that's really fast" while inside I would be embarrassed because I knew that I had only barely been able to play it or sometimes I would make mistakes and hope that no one noticed. In essence I felt like a fraud!

The thing is it didn't matter if other people noticed or not. I knew! I knew that I wasn't able to play fast solos properly and it pissed me off that I wasn't good enough.

Well that nightmare scenario is now very much in the past for me and I want to talk about the principles that increased my limits of guitar speed by alot!

A common and Major mistake that new players make is to try and play everything fast too soon. By doing this they develop bad timing habits which are a symptom of another common and Major mistake which is tensing the muscles in the picking and fretting hands. I can see how the problem develops in young players. Think about it; you're listening to loud adrenaline enhancing Rock and Metal that makes you want to jump around head banging and pumping your fist in the air, so it's only natural that this attitude flows over into guitar technique.

The solution for this is to be more like a wise tai chi master or budhist monk. You make all your movements fluid and relaxed. You only use the exact amount of energy required for any guitar technique. You step outside of the chaos of the music and let it flow out of you in an almost detached fashion. When I am blazing up and down the fretboard I think of nothing just “what is”.

This is why when I was younger I could never play really fast. I was super tense if anything. I would attempt to crush any failure by tensing up even more.

So start practicing any piece you want to learn very slowly in a relaxed way. Use a metronome to keep steady timing or use TAB sofware like Guitar Pro or Power Tab which have built in functions to play a piece of music at a slow pace. This is the time for you to do any serious thinking about your technique, how you hold the pick, using the most efficient energy conserving movements and hand positions. So take it slow at first and you will be playing lightning fast guitar in no time.

Thanks for reading this article. I will be be submitting more on the subject of guitar technique in the near future.

If you are interested in more information on my guitar teaching methods I do have an ebook available with MP3's titled Shred Lords – Neoclassical Guitar available at my website www.jameserceg.com. If you are serious about a career in music working as a professional guitar player I would recommend the Music Careers Mentoring Course run by Tom Hess at http://tomhess.net/.

© James for The Guitar Resource, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chords, fast, guitar, lesson, playing, scales, shred, shredding

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